Health Updates

I figured that since I wrote about some of the struggles Troy and I have had health-wise that I should give an update on how we are progressing. I will start with Troy.

Troy is actually doing really well. He’s still getting bad headaches, but he hasn’t had a migraine for several weeks. He usually gets migraines when he eats gluten, so I’m taking this as a sign that he’s been able to successfully avoid it. It probably helps that group lunches at work have been less frequent than they used to be.

The headaches that he does have, though, I’m guessing are from stress. There is a TON going on at work right now and for the past several weeks he has been working a couple of hours late at the office and then working more at home after he eats dinner. He worked several hours (or 8, i’m not sure) yesterday and he’s worked several hours so far today. He did the same thing last weekend. Hopefully things lessen up a little bit. I’ve heard from a few other people (because Troy doesn’t talk about work very often) that Troy’s team has the highest workload in the office and that at least one other team does zero overtime, so it kinda makes me wonder why they don’t shift some of the work a little bit. ESPECIALLY since they just fired everyone on Troy’s team except for him and then brought in two greenies. It’s no wonder Troy is so stressed out these past few weeks.

This stress, too, is what I’m thinking is prohibiting him from healing entirely from his previous illness. He’s doing a lot better than he was at the beginning of the month, but I think the stress from work and the having to work every freakin day and at home in the evenings is making is hard for his body to get the rest it needs to properly heal. But, I guess this is what happens when someone has a high work ethic and has a strong desire to make sure things are done right and on time. I just hate to see him unable to get a true break from work so he can decompress. I’m trying to help out more with things at home, but there’s not a lot I don’t already do here. I can’t do his work for him, unfortunately. The thing I should focus on, I suppose, is that he IS healing and he IS getting better. It’s been slow, but it is happening. He doesn’t talk about abdominal pain every day anymore and his appetite is almost back to normal. He isn’t as worn down as he was and his sense of humor is coming back, which I’m not entirely sure is a good thing…………………………….haha.

SO, overall, Troy is feeling better. I’m not sure when this crazy 24/7 work work work thing is going to end, but I hope it does soon. I’m very glad we are going away this weekend. Troy needs a break. Not that we haven’t taken several over these past 7 1/2 months, but the last two vacations were pretty rough with him not feeling well and being so stressed from work. This trip to Vietnam on Thursday night will hopefully let him recharge and get some good mojo going.

As for me, I’m doing better, too. For the most part. Several days ago I went to bed around 10:30 and woke up shortly after midnight with both of my eyes super red and swollen, my sinuses swollen and my nose just dripping off my face. I was sneezing almost uncontrollably and I just felt like crap. The week previous, I’d woken up with one eye or the other swollen a little, but not both and not that much. I felt fine when I’d gone to bed that night, so I knew that whatever was making me sick was in my room, which we’ve suspected for a while now. This event helped pinpoint that it wasn’t the plant making me sick because I’d scrubbed my bedroom on Tuesday afternoon as well as washed my quilt and all my bed sheets. I’d just done that a few days before, but I’d received that plant the day after I washed my bedding and had had it in my room with the windows open, so I wanted to see if the powder on the plant was causing some kind of allergic reaction.

Suffice it to say, the plant is not making me sick. I had our realtor come check out the water spot on my wall (this is the third time I’ve asked, but this time I asked his wife) and they brought a technician in on Friday and he said there is a broken pipe in my bathroom wall, which is the one right up against my bedroom and that there is mold inside. It kinda makes me mad because when we moved in, I told the realtor that the water spot on the wall was mold and that he needed to get it fixed, but they brought in a guy who said it was just water damage and painted over it. Several months later I told the realtor that the spot was back, but he didn’t do anything. NOW, the spot is huge and I’m getting sick. Well, I supposed I’ve been getting sick for a while. My nose gets all runny and I sneeze a lot when I shower, but I thought that was just some weird trait I have. I always sneeze in bathrooms.

Turns out, after waking up with my eyes and sinuses all swollen, I did a bit of research online and discovered I may have a mold allergy. The several websites I read stated that persons with mold allergies are super sensitive to mold even when it isn’t visible or in direct contact and the reaction to prolonged exposure is swollen eyes, malaise and constant cold symptoms. I get colds a lot here and my nose always goes nuts when I take a shower. And now the eye swelling. Maybe I’m being a hypochondriac, but what I do know is that there is confirmed mold in my bedroom and I wake up a lot at night with a runny nose, which has now been joined by swollen eyes. I sneeze in the shower all the time and my nose runs for a while after I get out of the shower.

Since that night where I woke up with my eyes swollen, I’ve been sleeping on the couch and using Troy’s bathroom. My eyes still itch a bit from time to time, but the rest of the symptoms are mostly gone. I sleep through the night better and I don’t wake up with my eyes swollen and nose going nuts. Showering in Troy’s bathroom doesn’t make me sneeze or make my nose run.

The only time those symptoms return is when I go in my bedroom. I keep my bedroom door shut with the AC on to keep the mold from growing more. I figure that mold grows in warm, moist environments, so I’m keeping the room cooled down to hopefully keep the infestation from getting worse. The only problem with that is that when I walk in my room to get something, I’m hit in the face with the scent of wet dirt and within minutes am sneezing with a runny nose and itchy eyes. If I’m in there too long, my eyes start to swell up. It sucks. I want to get everything out of there and get it cleaned, but our washing machine is broken, so I can’t wash any of my clothes or the bedding. I’ve thought about sending my clothing to the laundry service downstairs, but I don’t want my shirts shrinking. I supposed I could send all the non-shrinkable stuff down there and get it cleaned. That would help. I will do that tomorrow. That will get about half my clothes out of there and get them super clean. The rest will just have to be put in plastic bags until the washing machine gets fixed and I can wash them. Good thing I left that one load of laundry hanging in the laundry room so that I have some non-affected clothing to wear.

The only sad thing about all this is the plant. 🙁 I’d stuck the plant outside the front door so I could determine whether or not it was the cause of me being sick (since I started getting sick the morning after I received the plant), but Troy decided that he would take matters into his own hands. Since I’d been sick for almost a week and the plant was still around, he thought it could still be the plant since I go in and out the front door several times a day. So, sweet boy of mine, he decided to just throw the plant away. He said he didn’t want it around if it was making me sick. I’m sad the plant is gone because I miss all the plants I had back in the US, but I can’t be upset with him because he was only looking out for me.

Troy hasn’t enjoyed me being sick any more than I’ve enjoyed watching him be sick. There’s not a lot either of us can do for the other, so it kinda brings a sense of him doing what he could to help me when he saw something he thought would make me get better. Getting rid of what he thought was making me sick was his way of doing the only thing he really could do to help me get feeling better. Kinda makes me look at him and think he’s not so bad after all. 😉